"If there is something to desire" by Vera Pavlova (Translated by Steven Seymour)
If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.
I remember reading this poem on the train various times during my commute to high school. It made me think about my desires and what I wanted to do with my life. But being a young person, those desires change often. I read this poem as saying that if you have those regrets and memories that may come with aspirations, it was no longer a desire but something real. That it is better to try and fulfill those desires and either obtain them or not, than to not have something to strive for.
Here is a link to the MTA page that has this poem along with others that have been in the subway's Poetry in Motion exhibits(?).
http://www.mta.info/mta/pim/poems.htm
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Ive read that poem as well. i think mta advertisement should be more educational and intriging rather than have thousands of ad.s for bullshit.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't even thought about these poems, but I am glad you remembered them. I like how this builds each idea upon the previous one.
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